Princes Apartment I

by Alana Cooke. Architecture. Interior Design.

The Princes Apartment is an example of the essential contrasting dialogue that emerges between Australian heritage architecture and contemporary renovations.

The bones of a 1937 build provided Alana Cooke and her team with a beautiful opportunity to engage with the charismatic design of a celebrated era and a challenge to activate a spacious 60 square meter family home with ultra-functionality.

The spatial plan was reconfigured within the existing narrow footprint. Circulation around the entry flows more easily into the newly linked kitchen and living, which gained views through the kitchen across to parkland and allowed for more social and open engagement between the spaces. Private living spaces are connected via a long corridor – imagine a dumbbell shape, with the bathroom the handle and the bedrooms at the opposite end.

A modern services pod (kitchen, laundry, ample storage) was inserted to the core of the floorplan, the features of which stripped back existing decorative elements. The pod’s square-set cornices, smart angles and contemporary light fittings contrast with the original embellishments retained in the rooms either side, but remain in step with the building’s character. Charcoal tones echo the external wrought iron, and brass fixtures and marble benchtops are unfailing in their classic style.

Storage is a fundamental home necessity anywhere, but here, with limited space, it drove both the aesthetic intent and pragmatic approach. In reconceptualising the traditional apartment layouts, floor-to-ceiling cupboards on the ‘exterior’ of the pod – what is faced on entry – conceal a European laundry. The pod’s charcoal felt cladding is used to dual effect: its tactility is unexpected, used where you might ordinarily find a timber or laminate, and practically it absorbs the acoustics of the services it contains, dampening sounds that travel towards the bedrooms.

Floor-to-ceiling kitchen joinery also plays the part of functional obscurer, integrating the fridge and pantry behind black MDF. Placed strategically at the end of the corridor, it partners with the felt-lined pod to make the kitchen a tidy discovery, rather than the first thing you confront upon arrival.

Well-rendered solutions to practical necessities result in a space that confidently performs the duties of a much larger footprint residence. It’s these outcomes that we design for, and what can happily be found when you carefully coax the best out of any space.

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